Category: Higher education

As schools return for their academic years amid a global pandemic, many questions persist around how best to enable both teachers and students to learn remotely, including accessing materials and applications in a secure and suitable form. Similarly, staff and administrators must have a reliable system for handling confidential information. For some, the answer is found in VPN connectivity and VDI. Streaming applications over the internet instead of having them physically installed on devices and desktops can save costs and address security concerns. InterVision, AWS Partner Network (APN) Partner, helped one of their higher education customers quickly and securely scale remote application delivery to students and faculty using Amazon AppStream 2.0, a solution that provides highly available remote user access while reducing the management time and costs compared to traditional solutions.

T-Digital, a division of Tshwane University Technology Enterprise Holding (TUTEH) in South Africa, built TRes, a digital platform for students living in student housing and for accommodation providers. TRes connects students with available housing and verified and authorized property owners. It addresses student accommodation needs and helps verified and approved property owners fully allocate their residences, while alleviating administrative burden. With help from AWS Professional Services, T-Digital experienced flexibility, agility, and realized cost savings.

With the global shift to remote learning during this year’s back-to-school season, the need for flexible and comprehensive learning tools is more important than ever. To help, AWS Educate introduced new features including the Cloud Builder Badge for students and no-cost learning content and professional development for educators.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, only 60 percent of college students receive a degree within six years. Universities—like Portland State University (PSU) and Oklahoma State University (OSU-OKC)—are using data lakes for analytics and machine learning to improve academic achievement by helping students reach their educational goals faster. Read on for how institutions use Amazon S3 for data lakes.

Due to COVID-19, schools quickly shifted to remote education to meet students’ needs and wrap up the school year. But with a new school year upon us and social distancing measures still in place, many classes will not gather in traditional classroom settings. Millions of students are now learning in their homes. And public sector leaders are creating new models to ensure learning is sustainable and accessible to all. These changes certainly carry their own set of challenges, but they also open new possibilities for the coming school year. Check out examples of how the COVID-19 pandemic has spurred important solutions to existing problems from primary school to higher education, and how the cloud has opened up new possibilities for educators and students as they start the new school year.

Hamdan Bin Mohammed Smart University (HBMSU) successfully completed the full migration of its systems and applications from its on-premises data centers to AWS. The move provides immediate benefits to HBMSU such as cost savings, flexibility, and security, and opens up new horizons for innovation, research, and global expansion. With the move to the cloud, the university is working toward its mission to reshape the future of education in the Middle East.

University students in the United Kingdom and Ireland can now register for the AWS Educate University Challenge for a chance to win prizes for their university while building skills in the cloud. In the inter-university competition, students from the UK and Ireland earn points for their university by completing AWS Educate Cloud Career Pathways and Specialty Badges.

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) believes that technology is a powerful tool for driving results and innovation on campus. Their chief information officer, Mark Henderson, developed a task force—called the Data and Technology Innovation Lab—to identify department challenges and task individuals to build innovative solutions using technology. One area where UIUC identified an opportunity was sports analytics using machine learning (ML). Learn more about how UIUC was inspired by what they were seeing in professional sports, using data to shift their approach to coaching football.

Pearson delivers anywhere, anytime digital course material and learning opportunities for students globally using AWS. As a global company, Pearson turned to the cloud to deliver content globally, build agile, accessible solutions, and to power its digital transformation. With Revel and Pearson eText, Pearson provides flexible, digital learning solutions for students and instructors, including digitized textbooks with interactive, multimedia content, and assessment features. Building on AWS has helped Pearson to iterate quickly, innovate on behalf of students and educators, scale on demand, and reach learners globally.

Research computing has come a long way from the mainframes of the 1960s. At the recent Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing (PEARC) conference, I noted four emerging themes that underscore how the field continues to evolve.